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How I store my files

unixsheikh.com

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Re: How I store my files

#71

Post by TchoBeer »

bachmeier wrote: post #66

> Everything can look really nice "on paper" but you don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I have worked with a lot of different people and I have seen too much crazy shit to fully trust anyone with my important data. A cloud provider may have the best of intentions, but sometimes all it takes is a single grumpy employee or even a minor mistake to do a lot of damage. OneDrive and Google Drive are both pretty che…

Alternatively, "sure all my sensitive data was stolen and leaked, but at least I made it to Italy" said no one ever.

Re: How I store my files

#72

Post by pricecomstock »

visviva wrote: post #11

Darn, I was hoping this would be an article about organizing one's files. I was really in the mood for reading about that, then spending the rest of the morning reworking my own system.

I have used this system in certain areas before. It's decent. But it's interesting to read about if you're in the mood!

https://johnnydecimal.com/

Re: How I store my files

#73

Post by helmholtz »

TchoBeer wrote: post #71
bachmeier wrote: post #66

> Everything can look really nice "on paper" but you don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I have worked with a lot of different people and I have seen too much crazy shit to fully trust anyone with my important data. A cloud provider may have the best of intentions, but sometimes all it takes is a single grumpy employee or even a minor mistake to do a lot of damage. OneDrive and Google Drive are both pretty che…

Alternatively, "sure all my sensitive data was stolen and leaked, but at least I made it to Italy" said no one ever.

How common an occurence is that? How often is an unimportant, middle class person's data at risk, really? Enough that you'd want to spin up your ZFS storage?

Hypothetically, let's say I had my entire life on Google. I have a unique password for it, backed up by 2FA, without the SMS/Authenticator fallback. What's the long term consequence? Google knows everything about me? They already do anyway. Someone can steal my printout of the backup codes?

I don't ask this to stir shit. I genuinely have these sorts of discussions with friends and family when I try to tell them that privacy is important, and I fail absolutely at convincing them of it.

Re: How I store my files

#74

Post by crazygringo »

TchoBeer wrote: post #71
bachmeier wrote: post #66

> Everything can look really nice "on paper" but you don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I have worked with a lot of different people and I have seen too much crazy shit to fully trust anyone with my important data. A cloud provider may have the best of intentions, but sometimes all it takes is a single grumpy employee or even a minor mistake to do a lot of damage. OneDrive and Google Drive are both pretty che…

Alternatively, "sure all my sensitive data was stolen and leaked, but at least I made it to Italy" said no one ever.

I trust major cloud providers like Google or Microsoft to protect my data far more than I'd ever trust a bunch of retail hardware I plugged together and configured myself.

They have entire gigantic teams of employees dedicated to security and privacy and protection from threats. I couldn't replicate that even if I wanted to.

If someone wants to steal and leak your sensitive data, they'll have a much easier time getting into your home hardware (whether over a network or physically or both) than they will getting it out of Google Drive, provided you have 2FA and good passwords you keep memorized.

Re: How I store my files

#75

Post by cogman10 »

crazygringo wrote: post #74
TchoBeer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, "sure all my sensitive data was stolen and leaked, but at least I made it to Italy" said no one ever.

I trust major cloud providers like Google or Microsoft to protect my data far more than I'd ever trust a bunch of retail hardware I plugged together and configured myself. They have entire gigantic teams of employees dedicated to security and privacy and protection from threats. I couldn't replicate that even if I wanted to. If someone wants to steal and leak your sensitive data, they'll have a much easier time getti…

There are different risks.

Yes, at home storage is more at risk for a targeted attack. However, cloud storage is more at risk for a general attack.

It's dead simple for a waiter to steal your CC#. Yet that's likely not going to happen as they'd lose their job and run major risks at getting caught by the police.

On the flip side, a big company like target, even though they have a wealth of experts hired to prevent it, has lost millions of CC#s. That's because they are a nice juicy target.

It really just comes down to which risks are more or less likely for you the individual.

I trust my cluster of retail hardware because the effort for a hacker to pull data from it is a lot higher than the actual value of the data stored there.

Re: How I store my files

#76

Post by dmje »

I have a Synology NAS. All cloud files sync to it (Dropbox and Gdrive, the latter using "real" files, not just their .gdoc format), all backed up nightly to Synology C2 in the cloud, encrypted.

Photos, which are in the "absolutely irreplaceable" category: all of the above but also have Mylio running so have external drives and 2x desktops with this data on them.

Feels pretty safe, I think...?

Re: How I store my files

#77

Post by kumarsw »

I'll agree with the author partly on software such as rustic/duplicacy - they are not a good solution for long-term archiving, nor are they marketed as such. I keep a network share that I mirror the home folder on my computers to daily, but I take periodic snapshots of the share with duplicacy and copy the snapshots to Backblaze B2.

The comments seem to be conflating Google Drive type cloud storage with more general S3/B2 object storage. I wouldn't rely on Google Drive and friends for backups - typically those have pretty short version histories as they are intended more for file synchonization with backup being an afterthought.

Re: How I store my files

#78

Post by visviva »

pricecomstock wrote: post #72
visviva wrote: post #11

Darn, I was hoping this would be an article about organizing one's files. I was really in the mood for reading about that, then spending the rest of the morning reworking my own system.

I have used this system in certain areas before. It's decent. But it's interesting to read about if you're in the mood! https://johnnydecimal.com/

That's what I'm talking about... and a wasted Friday afternoon is even better than a wasted Friday morning!

Re: How I store my files

#79

Post by dheera »

dmje wrote: post #76

I have a Synology NAS. All cloud files sync to it (Dropbox and Gdrive, the latter using "real" files, not just their .gdoc format), all backed up nightly to Synology C2 in the cloud, encrypted. Photos, which are in the "absolutely irreplaceable" category: all of the above but also have Mylio running so have external drives and 2x desktops with this data on them. Feels pretty safe, I think...?

Having copies in at least 2 physical locations is important, because RAID/on-site backups won't help you if there's a fire/flood/theft that destroys everything.

Back in school I used to have 2 Synology NAS, one in my dorm, one in my office, each running two drives with RAID 1. I had a gigabit link between my dorm and office (in 2008-2014!) thanks to MIT's awesome network.

Now I live in Silicon Valley where even in 2021 I can only have a shitty 15 megabit Comcrap uplink so that setup doesn't work anymore.

What I do now is a 4-bay Synology NAS.

- The first 2 bays are RAID 1, they are the "live" volume

- The 3rd bay is the "nightly backup" volume and syncs to the "live" volume every day late at night. That way if I accidentally delete something or mess up something I can look at yesterday's version at any time, very conveniently.

- The 4th bay is usually empty, but once every 2-4 months I bring a drive from a storage closet in a different town, plug it in, sync it, and put it back in storage. Car is still faster than the internet in Silicon Valley. And that also allows me to have an airgapped backup, just in case there is ever a ransomware attack on Synology that destroys all the online drives.

Re: How I store my files

#80

Post by crazygringo »

cogman10 wrote: post #75
crazygringo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust major cloud providers like Google or Microsoft to protect my data far more than I'd ever trust a bunch of retail hardware I plugged together and configured myself. They have entire gigantic teams of employees dedicated to security and privacy and protection from threats. I couldn't replicate that even if I wanted to. If someone wants to steal and leak your sensitive data, they'll have a much easier time getti…

There are different risks. Yes, at home storage is more at risk for a targeted attack. However, cloud storage is more at risk for a general attack. It's dead simple for a waiter to steal your CC#. Yet that's likely not going to happen as they'd lose their job and run major risks at getting caught by the police. On the flip side, a big company like target, even though they have a wealth of experts hired to prevent it,…

I'd say home storage is more at risk even for a general attack if you're using retail hardware with default configurations, like a NAS -- it's easy to scan the entire internet for vulnerabilities. Plus it tends to be vulnerable even to non-traditional attacks like Bitcoin ransoms. Whereas cloud storage is custom and patched and up-to-date and monitored... your consumer hardware mostly isn't any of those.

And there's a huge distinction between retail corporations leaking CC#'s, vs cloud storage providers. Securing credit card numbers is not Target's core competency. While securing personal and corporate data is a core competency for major established cloud providers.

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